As far as I know, the growth process of European athletes is dominated by clubs or individual teams, and I have mentioned before that in the years when the Danish team played, only a very small number of people were "organized" by the national team, and the rest were trained by themselves or trained with clubs. That is to say, in the process of their growth, it is their own family or club that provides them with all the software and hardware conditions they need, not the badminton association.
The same is true of Thailand's Indanon, whose parents worked at a factory owner who was a badminton fan and set up her own club to hire coaches to teach the children. In such a growth environment, the main object of return after the athlete becomes a talent is his own team or club, and the national team or badminton association mainly undertakes the work of event registration and organization of participation, and there is no ability to restrain the team members and there is no qualification. In this case, it is normal for athletes to choose to be "free agents". To put it simply, it is that the growth process does not use too many resources of the Feather Association, and there is not much return.
However, for Malaysia, and even most of the Asian badminton powers, it is still based on the professional team echelon training model. When you are selected as a reserve seedling when you are very young, then your training venue, equipment, related accommodation, catering, supporting coaches, team doctors are all provided by the collective, and many people can not only get a salary without spending money when they enter the professional team. Under such a model, the resources needed by athletes in the process of growth are basically provided by the association and the team, and it is reasonable to return to the team after becoming a talent. The former is to spend money to cultivate themselves, so there is a greater range of free choice after becoming a talent; the latter is a collective spending money to cultivate, and after becoming a talent, it naturally needs to be returned.
Both have their own characteristics, and they have also cultivated excellent athletes, such as Denmark's Gade, Rasmussen, Acelon, etc., Germany's Schenck, Thailand's Indanon, etc.; collective growth like China, Malaysia, South Korea, etc. In the past, the Japanese team was also affiliated with athletes, but Park Ju-bong gradually formed a national team training model after serving as the head coach. Therefore, I think that according to the thinking habits of the country and the nation, the actual situation of the athletes, etc., two different training models can produce talents, but different growth processes make the thinking mode and perspective of the two sides different. The different views of Li Zongwei and Acesaron on the Li Zijia incident are caused by this reason. There is no right or wrong, just different angles.
As you can see on the Internet, if you buy something for 16 yuan, and then hand it to the salesman for 20 yuan and then hand it over 1 yuan, Chinese understand what it means, but Europeans will be confused. Everyone has the right to evaluate things from their own point of view, but for the Li Zijia incident, what I personally hope is that this matter will be resolved quickly and smoothly, and that ensuring that excellent athletes can appear on the field is much more important than various discussions and solidarity criticism. I have always believed that athletes are at the heart of a sport, and that if a very good athlete's career is overshadowed by reasons other than athletic ability, it is a loss for the entire badminton world.